hopepainandshit | TLV: IC Inbox

He shrugs. "I don't care, Richter. I don't. I enjoyed putting that blade through him, and if that makes me the inmate here, then so be it."

"If you don't care then why are you bothering to get me to read this?" He flicks Daud's page back to the table. "Burrows and Daud were the power behind it, but everyone else was a stepping stone on the way. You didn't need to kill any of them."

"No, perhaps not. But I wanted to."

He glances to Daud and then back up to Richter's face. Daud, who had been the Outsider's sacrifice. Corvo was the next.

Richter just sighs quietly.

"I don't think enjoying killing the person who wronged you made you an inmate." Well, he does a little, but it's a symptom rather than the cause. "But I think the part where you didn't give a shit about the people you hurt on the way to do it might be."

"Who? The others involved in the conspiracy? The guards? Who deserved to be spared?" he challenges.

"They probably thought they were going to help make things better. Killing them, or whatever fucking worse thing happened to the Pendletons, that doesn't show them that they fucked up by believing in this conspiracy." He spreads a hand across the sheets. "The only way to prove these sorts of people wrong is to prove them wrong, not kill everyone. That makes them think they must be right because why else would they be getting murdered with no explanation?"

"That wasn't my job, boy. I'm not here to teach the gods damned world a lesson and guide them gently towards the fucking right thing."

He rolls his eyes.

"That's what Jessamine would've been doing as Empress." No hesitation on that particular landmine, but his tone is soft, almost gentle. "Wasn't it?"

"She was the Empress," he says and his voice is low, a warning.

"And she didn't get to finish her work. Because they killed her."

"A person's work doesn't end with their death unless you let it," he says quietly. He's not angry, but he's not repentant either - it's quiet steel, a sword stuck upright in the line in the sand.

"Emily was too young to take it up. Everyone else was trying to destroy what Jessamine worked for." He looks back at Corvo. "You could've kept her work alive."

He's quiet for a long moment. Not shut down, but thoughtful, eventually shaking his head.

"No," he finally decides. "No, the country was too far gone. Once I got out of prison, it was too late."

"So you gave up."

For all the ways that could be scornful or derisive... it's not. It's just kind of tired, sympathetic. "You could've made a change. You could have set things up so when Emily does come into power, there were people she trusts around her, people who would challenge her denounced and out of power, out of the way. The city could have been on her side."

Corvo's prepared to argue that he didn't give up, that he simply did what he needed to, but he doesn't. He doesn't because the rest of that statement leaves him utterly unprepared to defend himself. It's clear that he hasn't actually thought about it in those terms, in that way, and hearing it feels like the air gets sucked out of the room.

Corvo sits back, staring at a point past Richter for a very long moment.

He's silent, though all defenses have gone out of him.

And Richter watches him back, head tilted slightly just so it's not staring directly at him. But he turns his face away slightly when he speaks, to give Corvo that courtesy.

"You love Emily. I don't doubt that for a moment, or how far you'd go for her. But you didn't do any of this-" he taps the pages, silently. "-for her. You did it for yourself."

Again, he's silent, but again, it's because he's taking it in. He's absorbing that guilt, because that's the only thing he can feel right now. It drowns him, and the air to the room hasn't come back and he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to breathe again.

He stands slowly, not to leave or escape, but to simply move, walking away from the table with his arms folded.

"I - started it. Doing it for her. To get her back. And then I got her back. They put my daughter, my ten year old child, in a fucking brothel. I didn't care what happened to any of them, except that they should all hurt."

"She was alright when you found her, wasn't she?" It's as much clarity as a question, and he stays very firmly seated so Corvo doesn't feel like he's being chased down for it, but he does turn in his seat to keep watching him. "They only held her there. She's too important to risk something actually happening to her."

It's the principle of it, not the act itself. "Yes, she was safe," he answers, but it doesn't mean finding her in that room at the top of the stairs was any easier. Or was any less horrifying.

"It doesn't matter. They killed her mother in front of her and then kidnapped her. I was angry."

"You were reckless. You didn't care about collateral. You didn't think about how at any point they could have caught on to what you were doing and killed her to make you stop, because you were decimating their numbers."

He looks back at Corvo. "How many people were you killing in front of Emily? How much blood is on her hands because her father and protector was killing everyone for her?"

Je flinches this tome, each word coming a blow at him. One at a time, they strike him with precision, and all he can do is sit and take it. Richter's right, and Corvo can feel the blood, tacky and warm on his hands.

He stays silent, hating himself as he stares blankly at the wall.

Richter gives him a minute of silence to breathe. To grieve his mistakes in silence.

"I think the part that made you an inmate," he says quietly. "Is when you stopped being a protector, and started being a killer."

There's a stillness to him now as his shoulders sink with a released breath.

Samuel had been right. The Loyalists had twisted him, and he allowed it to happen. He can't take that back,
as much as he wants to. And thinking about Emily is like getting too close to a hot stove. He can't bring himself to burn his hand quite yet.

"I think we're done here," he tells him instead, but there's no steel to it. He needs time to think, to drink, to sit and hate himself a while.

Richter nods, and stands as well.

And he pulls out his warden knife, and offers the hilt to Corvo.

"Go have a drink, if you need it." That was a lot, to process. Even he could see that. Boy that he is.

He takes it from him and tucks it away, not even bothering to say anything else, lest he fall apart at the seams.

Richter and the file get a single look and he disappears out the door.

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